It was by accident the English first found themselves in the waters of the Spanish Main. John Hawkins had been cruising the West Indies exchanging slaves for gold, when an ominous stillness fell on the sea. The palm trees took on the hard glister of metal leaves. The sunless sky turned yellow, the sea to brass; and before the six English ships could find shelter, a hurricane broke that flailed the fleet under sails torn to tatters clear across the Gulf of Mexico to Vera Cruz, the stronghold of Spanish power.
[Illustration: Sir John Hawkins.]
But Hawkins feared neither man nor devil. He {136} reefed his storm-torn sails, had the stoppers pulled out of his cannon in readiness, his gunners alert, ran up the English ensign, and boldly towed his fleet into port directly under Spanish guns. Sending a messenger ashore, he explained that he was sorry to intrude on forbidden waters, but that he needed to careen his ships for the repair of leakages, and now asked permission from the viceroy to refit. Perhaps, in his heart, the English adventurer wasn't sorry to get an inner glimpse of Mexico's defences. As he waited for permission, there sailed into the harbor the Spanish fleet itself, twelve merchantmen rigged as frigates, loaded with treasure to the value of one million eight hundred thousand pounds. The viceroy of Mexico, Don Martin Henriquez himself, commanded the fleet. English and Spanish ships dipped colors to each other as courteous hidalgoes might have doffed hats; and the guns roared each other salutes, that set the seas churning. Master John Hawkins quaffed mug after mug of foaming beer with a boisterous boast that if the Spaniards thought to frighten him with a waste of powder and smoke, he could play the same game, and "singe the don's beard."
Came a messenger, then, clad in mail to his teeth, very pompous, very gracious, very profuse of welcome, with a guarantee in writing from the viceroy of security for Hawkins while dismantling the English ships. In order to avoid clashes among the common soldiers, the fortified island was assigned for the English to {137} disembark. It was the 12th of August, 1568. Darkness fell with the warm velvet caress of a tropic sea. Half the crew had landed, half the cannon been trundled ashore for the vessels to be beached next day, when Hawkins noticed torches—a thousand torches—glistening above the mailed armor of a thousand Spanish soldiers marching down from the fort and being swiftly transferred to the frigates. A blare of Spanish trumpets blew to arms! The waters were suddenly alight with the flare of five fire-rafts drifting straight where the disarmed English fleet lay moored. Hawkins had just called his page to hand round mugs of beer, when a cannon-shot splintering through the mast arms overhead ripped the tankard out of his hand.[2]
"God and Saint George," thundered the enraged Englishman, "down with the traitorous devils!"
No time to save sailors ashore! The blazing rafts had already bumped keels with the moored fleet. No chance to raise anchors! The Spanish frigates were already abreast in a life-and-death grapple, soldiers boarding the English decks, sabring the crews, hurling hand grenades down the hatches to blow up the powder magazines. Hawkins roared "to cut the cables." It was a hand-to-hand slaughter on decks slippery with blood. No light but the musketry fire and glare of burning masts! The little English company were fighting like a wild beast trapped, when with a {138} thunderclap that tore bottom out of hull—Hawkins's ship flew into mid-air, a flaring, fiery wreck—then sank in the heaving trough of the sea, carrying down five hundred Spaniards to a watery grave. Cutlass in hand, head over heels went Hawkins into the sea. The hell of smoke, of flaming mast poles, of blazing musketry, of churning waters—hid him. Then a rope's end flung out by some friend gave handhold. He was up the sides of a ship, that had cut hawsers and off before the fire-rafts came! Sails were hoisted to the seaward breeze. In the carnage of fire and blood, the Spaniards did not see the two smallest English vessels scudding before the wind as if fiend-chased. Every light on the decks was put out. Then the dark of the tropic night hid them. Without food, without arms, with scarcely a remnant of their crews—the two ships drifted to sea.
Not a man of the sailors ashore escaped. All were butchered, or taken prisoners for a fate worse than butchery—to be torn apart in the market-place of Vera Cruz, baited in the streets to the yells of on-lookers, hung by the arms to out-of-doors scaffolding to die by inches, or be torn by vultures. The two ships at sea were in terrible plight. North, west, south was the Spanish foe. Food there was none. The crews ate the dogs, monkeys, parrots on board. Then they set traps for the rats of the hold. The starving seamen begged to be marooned. They would risk Spanish cruelty to escape starvation. Hawkins landed {139} three-quarters of the remnant crews either in Yucatan or Florida. Then he crept lamely back to England, where he moored in January, 1569.
Of the six splendid ships that had spread their sails from Plymouth, only the Minion and Judith came back; and those two had been under command of a thick-set, stocky, red-haired English boy about twenty-four years of age—Francis Drake of Devon, one of twelve sons of a poor clergyman, who eked out a living by reading prayers for the Queen's Navy Sundays, playing sailor week days. Francis, the eldest son, was born in the hull of an old vessel where the family had taken refuge in time of religious persecution. In spite of his humble origin, Sir Francis Russell had stood his godfather at baptism. The Earl of Bedford had been his patron. John Hawkins, a relative, supplied money for his education. Apprenticed before the mast from his twelfth year, Drake became purser to Biscay at eighteen; and so faithfully had he worked his way, when the master of the sloop died, it was bequeathed to young Drake. Emulous of becoming a great sailor like Hawkins, Drake sold the sloop and invested everything he owned in Hawkins's venture to the West Indies. He was ruined to his last penny by Spanish treachery. It was almost a religion for England to hate Spain at that time. Drake hated tenfold more now. Spain had taught the world to keep off her treasure box. Would Drake accept the lesson, or challenge it?